[EM] Re: A few more poll comments

[Forest Simmons]

What is the supposed purpose of pre-election popularity polls today?

Is it just to entertain the voters?

Is it just to satisfy their curiosity?

Is it to help them make decisions about whom to vote for?

If it is the latter, do those who commission and report these polls 
realize that they are engaged in a process of self-fulfilling prophecy?

I think that they know that by drumming into the public day by day week by 
week and month by month which two candidates are the viable ones, that 
they are taking advantage of a weakness of our plurality system: the 
multiplicity of local equilibria.

Under Approval or Condorcet voters can safely vote their consciences 
without worrying too much about the popularity of the candidates.

Here's an idea:

Have the first election under Condorcet to get things started right.  Then 
after that either continue Condorcet if the voters like it, or fall back 
to Approval, which will have the results of an honest election to inform 
the voters.

Kind of like using Runge-Kutta to get a predictor/corrector method started 
in numerical solutions of initial value problems.

Forest